Favorite Bass Pedals?

BDDI. Not the best ive owned, but its the one i keep buying and going back to.

 

EBS Billy Sheehan Deluxe Drive. Has a mean, white noise type of distortion to it.

 

The only bass-specific pedal I have is a Pigtronix Bass Envelope Phaser, and I'm always raving about how great it is here.

 

Hard to go wrong with a Boss OC-2.

 

VT Deluxe - ability to store 3 presets for boost, some tone shaping and a little grit are useful... adding too much grit I find I loose too much low end playing live

 

Darkglass Alpha Omicron

 

I have about 30 pedals. I don’t have a single favorite. But these are what I actually use as opposed to what I play around with. None of them are what you’d consider “effect” effects. They’re all more what I think of as signal shapers or tone sculptors.

• Broughton Alex-1 Bax
• Broughton HPF
• Southampton Ictineo
• Southampton Fifth Gear V2
• Lounsberry Rupert
• Keeley Bassist
• Aphex Bass Xciter

 

Iron Ether Nimbus
DOD FX-25 (w/ LPF mod)

 

Strymon Mobius

 

Keeley Bassist and Pike Vulcan.

 

Fairfield Circuitry Barbershop. Empress Compressor.

 

darkglass Alpha omega

 

Diamond BCP-1

 

Drool @ idea of the Keeley and the Xciter together.

Also +1 for the Xciter it's in what I consider my 'studio survival kit' now.

 

The Xciter has been a godsend for a couple of basses I own. I have a chambered LP type bass that benefits enormously from the way it brings a degree of clarity to its otherwise gorgeously deep and complex bass tone. That bass sounds great all by itself. But with the Xciter in the chain it becomes really impressive. Last bass I had that got anything like that sound was an Alembic.

I did try it with the Keeley Bassist. But I didn’t find it made much difference (so far) being there. Probably because the low end on the Xciter is handled by a compressor/sustainer type circuit at its core. So the Xciter already brings a lot of what a properly dialed in compressor would do for the mix. And my playing levels are pretty even and controlled even without a compressor.

So maybe they both are doing the same thing the way I’ve got them set? Don’t know. I’ll definitely have to experiment further. I know some TBers here have been using two compressors (IIRC David Gilmour used to do that) in different places in their signal chain. That’s something I never tried and probably should.

 

Heck yeah. I'm kinda doing it but with a limiter with the Xciter instead of a comp. It's pretty coooool expanding all the awesome stuff and booting out all the transient crap I don't want

 

Probably the MXR M87 because it is my only "always on" pedal. Not a huge fan of effects on bass except dirt and, or rare occasions, octave down.

My most used dirt pedals are:

EBS Valve Drive (but only for a very slight touch of dirt if the amp itself is too clean).
EHX Green Russian
Darkglass Alpha Omicron
Onkart Gromt Grombass
Mooer Fog Bass

Hard to find one favourite. They're so different and in 6 months the list will probably have changed. Again...

 

If it has to be bass specific, my favorite bass pedal would be a darkglass vintage microtubes. I've owned one for about a few years and it is one of the best bass overdrive pedals I've ever owned. I plan to buy another darkglass pedal sometime in the future. either the alpha omnicron or the vintage deluxe.